Ideas for jobs beyond whm/ healer?

[Tzain]

Provoke is 22. But really besides the point entirely.
No Tank NEEDS Provoke. Just like no White Mage NEEDS Swiftcast. The thing is, it's WORTH that slot. When stuff goes sideways, those 20-something levels you ground out to get this skill suddenly become trivial compared to how much use you get.

I recently did 26 MRD levels for Mercy Blade for my GLA, as soon as I used it though I realized that it wasn't worth the effort. I've never felt the same on MRD all those times I hit Provoke and pulled something off a healer.

As for Geomancer. I posted this idea in another thread, but wouldn't mind some constructive crits on it.

Geomancer – Proactive/offensive healer: Base Class of Conjurer with sub classes of Archer and thm
Concept: Uses proactive Shield type heals with a heavy use of Stone Skin. Designed with heavy use of Cleric stance. In order to heal without MND, the heals have to be shield based and scale with the targets own defense/hp. As long as you can stay ahead of the damage they are quite powerful, but recovering once you fall behind is much harder.
Overgrowth – Direct Damage attack that heals nearby players for amount proportional to the damage dealt.
Touch of Stone – DOT on enemy, attacks made against the enemy has a chance to refresh Stoneskin or Earthen Blood (but not at the same time).
Avalanche: Self buff that temporarily increases Damage and Spell speed with each Stoneskin, Earthen Blood, Stone, Stone II, Touch of Stone,or Overgrowth cast. Stacks up to 5 times, casting any spell besides a spell on this list will cancel the effect immediately. Lasts until canceled. Cooldown. (note: by design, canceling cleric stance will cancel avalanche)
Body of Earth: Party wide effect. Decreases the damage done by the next hit by 80%, inflicts HEAVY on the party while in effect.
Earthen Blood: increases the hp of a party member by 25% in the form of a shield (damage done to the shield cannot be healed except by Touch of Stone procs). Earthen blood shield is affected by damage only after stone skin has been destroyed

I am realizing that it needs some kind of AE offense though. Maybe a persistant ground effect?

[Kura_Gari]

I know this is off the OP's topic but I had to add it.

If you ask me, I see potential for a DD job as CNJ's second job. They have elemental magic already. There are 2 "top" tier magics in game with BLM, those being Flare and Freeze. There are 6 in total throughout other FF games, Flare, Freeze, Burst, Flood, Tornado and Quake.

Obviously Burst would fall into BLM whenever the level cap increase comes or they just opt to add new skills. But what about the last 3 Flood, Tornado, and Quake? Those 3 are the based off the elemental magics of CNJ. So there is a base already for it to expand into greater damage dealing magic for a new CNJ class.

As for another healer job? One option is they do something not based off a previous FF job? Where would it branch though? Currently for the mages, ACN has SCH and CNJ has WHM. THM just seems hard to transform into a healer unless it's some sort of HP draining/sacrifice setup. If all else fails I guess, add RDM off of GLA or new class and make it support healing. Give it a heal relative to Cure1 and Physick with actual DPS skills. Or maybe a on/off switch like Cleric Stance that lets it fight or heal?

[Tang]

Provoke is 22. But really besides the point entirely.
No Tank NEEDS Provoke. Just like no White Mage NEEDS Swiftcast. The thing is, it's WORTH that slot. When stuff goes sideways, those 20-something levels you ground out to get this skill suddenly become trivial compared to how much use you get.

I'd like to see Turn 2 done without provoke. Its nice to have before that fight but during, its pretty much required for tanks.

[Kitru]

No Tank NEEDS Provoke. Just like no White Mage NEEDS Swiftcast.

There's a pretty big difference between Swiftcast and Provoke. Swiftcast is nice because it lets you actually cast Raise/Resurrection or Summon while in combat without stopping you from healing or moving for 10 seconds. Fights like ADS in coil turn 2 where you have to tank swap on regular basis and with a relatively narrow window (the debuff runs off right as the other tank gets 3-4 stacks and, if the other tank gets to 5-6, they're pretty much dead) or any fight where you think a tank might die and you *don't* want it to just be a wipe requires Provoke, for all intents and purposes. Sure, if you have 2 tanks that are equally geared and cooperate *insanely* well, you could do it without Provoke, but you best hope that your DPS are *really* good at managing their enmity since both tanks are going to have to play a delicate game of "don't steal aggro too soon while staying close enough to take over quickly when it's needed", which is pretty much a guarantee that the tanks are throttling their enmity.

Provoke might not be *required* for all fights (I don't even think about packing it for anything except for Binding Coil and Titan), but there are some that it *is* effectively required for. Not having it would be like trying to do Caduceus without any CDs at all: sure, it *can* be done, but it's pretty obvious that the devs don't intend for it to be done that way.

[Gamemako]

Options for new healers? Well, let's look at them in order of which classes I see as targets for the healer treatment:

Chemist -- Healer in many, many games. Very obvious option which has been suggested over 9000 times. Would almost certainly require a new class, however, due to needing a complete set of potion-making mechanics. Fortunately, second jobs are exceedingly easy to come by with that sort of design.
White Monk -- Healer for the Bangaa race in FFTA/2. Could be a second job for Pugilist, repurposing the Fists abilities. If not that, then you can be assured that White Monk won't make an appearance.
Oracle/Mystic -- Healing abilities in most appearances (Banon, FF5 port). That's never really the point of the job, but it's no less possible than Scholar as fairy-summoning healer. Could come from any caster, which would have to be Thaumaturge at this point or some future caster. I don't know how you'd implement a Thaumaturge healer, though. Would have to tie healing rate to Transpose use, which is a bit fuzzy with current 10s CD on Transpose.
Devout/Seer -- Sometimes a superior white mage, Seer has become a status protection mage in more recent entries. This could be a healer's schtick and all, but doing so wouldn't make much sense without an entirely new class dedicated to it. Might be a bit odd to call something Seer with Gridanian storyline involving Conjurerers.

With some liberties, you could also do these:

Puppetmaster -- Healing abilities in FF4: After Years, FF11. Could come from any class. Would be a bit lame to have two pet healers, though.
Dancer -- Has had many a healing dance in its day, but is never a healer, per se. Could come from any lightly-armored character, which is just Pugilist or Archer at this point but could be other future classes as well. Yeah, I've now made two suggestions of PGL healer, so sue me.
Machinist -- Healing ability in FFTA/2, but it's a bit of a stretch.

I have omitted a few options for various reasons. Bishop is just a white mage in different clothing rather than a unique design. I thought Mediator/Orator would be a cool one with Musketeer, but it has no history of healing abilities. Sage carries great healing prowess, but isn't much of a Sage without the other side of the coin. Red Mage is like Sage, except that it also has melee abilities, which makes it a pretty terrible candidate in general.

[Nahara]

THM just seems hard to transform into a healer unless it's some sort of HP draining/sacrifice setup.

I've already stated that I really don't think RDM should be a healer, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people would lose their minds if it was stuck as one, but THM deserves a special mention here. I really don't think THM could realistically become a healer without making major changes to the way Astral Fire and Umbral Ice work. Because if Square Enix were to just give THM some healing spells, there would probably be no reason to bring in ANY other healer. One quick cast of Blizzard 1 to refresh the timer on Umbral Ice and you have a healer with pretty much infinite MP.

White Monk -- Healer for the Bangaa race in FFTA/2. Could be a second job for Pugilist, repurposing the Fists abilities. If not that, then you can be assured that White Monk won't make an appearance.

I'm not a fan of sticking the healer into melee range.

Puppetmaster -- Healing abilities in FF4: After Years, FF11. Could come from any class. Would be a bit lame to have two pet healers, though.

Once again you have that "healer in melee range" problem, because of the master goes down, the automaton goes down with it. Even if you somehow justified giving the master some healing powers as well (because nobody wants all of a class's healing potential in the hands of the summoned mammet's lacking AI), the concept steps on the toes of the Scholar, who is already the healer with the healer pet.

Dancer -- Has had many a healing dance in its day, but is never a healer, per se. Could come from any lightly-armored character, which is just Pugilist or Archer at this point but could be other future classes as well. Yeah, I've now made two suggestions of PGL healer, so sue me.

My thoughts on Dancer can be seen here.

Machinist -- Healing ability in FFTA/2, but it's a bit of a stretch.

Chemist would be a better potential healer, IMO. Could have it coming from Musketeer or something (but that's secondary to bringing Corsair back).

[Tzain]

I'd like to see Turn 2 done without provoke. Its nice to have before that fight but during, its pretty much required for tanks.

You're right. It would be crazy hard and require pinpoint precision and coordination between the agro levels, and to say nothing of the issues that such agro management would have on DPS since they'd likely have to hold back significantly. Which goes right back to my point.

"It's WORTH that slot".

Sorry if that got missed.

[Kitru]

Which goes right back to my point.

It's worth the slot because the devs essentially designed the content around having that slot occupied by that ability. You're using "required" in the most semantically strict form: it *must* be equipped lest the fight be impossible without it. We're using it in the practical sense: it *must* be equipped else you're not likely to ever do the content (and/or the devs expect you to have it). Example: you're not explicitly *required* to stay under the speed limit because you *can* just ignore it, but you're practically required because, if you don't you're going to get a ticket.

Using your definition, it's not *required* to wear any armor during Titan, but most people would say that it's required anyway because of practical considerations. Most people would say that you're *required* to have your relic and be in at least majority DL to do Coil because it is in any practical sense of the term. WARs don't *have* to get Featherfoot, Convalescence, and Internal Release, but it's pretty obvious that the devs think it's required because that's half of the WAR CD suite right there along with the 2 strongest CDs they've got. It's not "required" to have a tank when doing dungeons, you don't see loads of runs with 3 DPS using either a DRG or a Titan-egi instead of an actual tank and, even then, only when they hugely overgear it. Hell, WARs and PLDs aren't even *required* to run around in their tank stances, and you're not *required* to have a job in order to do end game content.

There's a vast gulf between practical requirements and explicit requirements. The devs haven't really placed *that many* practical requirements on the players that aren't just fundamental requirements of the baseline game itself. They have, however, included a great many practical requirements because, while they'll let you hamstring yourself, they have a certain expectation of performance that you're not going to meet without fulfilling them.

[Tzain]

[QUOTE=Kitru;1552830]snip[QUOTE]

Exactly. Now we're on the same page.

[Kinseykinz]

I know this is off the OP's topic but I had to add it.

If you ask me, I see potential for a DD job as CNJ's second job. They have elemental magic already. There are 2 "top" tier magics in game with BLM, those being Flare and Freeze. There are 6 in total throughout other FF games, Flare, Freeze, Burst, Flood, Tornado and Quake.

I know I can't be 100% sure about this until level-cap is raised, but I'm willing to bet money that the 'Ancient Magics' all 6 elements, will be Black Mages to cast. That yes, while THM only naturally has access to the Fire/Ice/Thunder chains, that within the BLM's whole bag of tricks they will gain the other 3 Ancient Magics. (Afterall, THM can't actually cast Flare or Freeze, only BLM can) So my assumption is that, 'Ancient Magic', ALL Ancient Magic, is what is 'special' about Black Mages.

Case in point: White Mage didn't get Quake as their big DD spell...they got 'Holy'